One hundred forty-five years ago today, Confederate forces made their last-ditch effort to win the Battle of Gettysburg, a key turning point in the Civil War. After their attacks the previous day had failed, Confederate General Robert E. Lee ordered this final assault on Cemetery Ridge against the advice of the attack's commanding officer, who correctly predicted that it would result in a decisive defeat.

Four-and-a-half months later, on November 19, 1863, President Lincoln delivered his famous Gettysburg Address. In the spirit of the Fourth of July holiday tomorrow (and because I think all Americans ought to be more familiar with the seminal documents of our country), the Address is reproduced below:

I'm a social scientist. I study all kinds of things and use lots of different methods in my research, but mostly I make my living analyzing large amounts of data collected through surveys. By necessity, that means I'm pretty good at using advanced statistical techniques to figure out what large populations think and how they behave.

A political poll is essentially nothing more than a public opinion survey. Lots of people think conducting a survey is easy. Lots of people are mistaken.

Below the jump, I'll explain what I mean, and I'll also explain (without resorting to the technical jargon characteristic of my field) why margin of error is important, how it works, and why so many people misinterpret it.

I make no apologies for it: I'm a Russ Feingold man. Feingold for President! I still believe he is the best person for the job, but he decided before the primary clusterfuck process began that he could do more good in the Senate. Another point in his favor -- he's too concerned with doing the most good he can for his constituents and the American people to gamble on the possibility of a promotion.

So with Feingold out and the contenders dropping like flies, I was left with two choices when I cast my ballot in the Massachusetts primary back in February: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Sure, other candidates were on the ballot, but even the ones who hadn't officially dropped out yet knew they were done. I was distinctly unimpressed with both Clinton and Obama -- I'm still not thrilled with either -- but I decided the responsible thing to do was to choose one of them.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/...

Thank you all very much. Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. (Applause.) And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.

April 30, 2008

Fighting in Baghdad's Shi'ite slum of Sadr City made April the deadliest month for Iraqi civilians since last August and for U.S. troops since last September, figures obtained on Wednesday showed.

http://www.nytimes.com/...

I feel like I've been repeating myself every few months, so you'll pardon me if I don't put in quite the same effort this time around, even if this is a message that apparently needs to be repeated constantly for some of the more puerile users of this site.

My standard backgrounder for this message:

All four of my grandparents were survivors of the Holocaust, three of them the sole survivors from their own very large families. My mother's parents met in Auschwitz shortly before liberation; my father's parents met in a displaced persons camp not long after the war ended. They all eventually made their way to safety and freedom in the Milwaukee area.

And I have had more than my fair share of confrontations with contemporary Nazis, some of which I wrote about here.

So I think I'm pretty qualified to judge who and what deserve the Nazi label and who and what don't. A simple primer:

There was a time not so long ago when certain certified idiots in the media and the GOP promoted an idea about this site that it was a cult, and its members were called extremists who blindly follow kos' every whim as if he was our god.

Today, it seems this nonsense is spouted more from within, directed either at the supporters of Barack Obama or, to a slightly lesser extent, the supporters of Hillary Clinton. Generally, the charge is made in context that, translated into English, goes something like this:

I disagree with you, so you must be a cult member.

For months, I've been trying to decide who I was going to vote for today. One by one, the various candidates dropped out, and though their names remained on the ballot I cast about three hours ago here in Massachusetts, only two really mattered anymore.

And so I was left with a difficult decision. You see, based on the way they have run their campaigns, the policies they have been promoting and promising, their conduct and the conduct of their staffs, their voting records, their rhetoric, and myriad other concerns, I felt like I could choose to decide between the better of two adequate candidates, or I could write in "Russ Feingold" as a protest, as a mark of what kind of Democrat our eventual nominee should be.

Because the worst rhetorical excesses and abuses of the most rabid partisans notwithstanding, what Senator Obama's supporters have criticized so loudly about you, Senator Clinton, is largely true, and what Senator Clinton's supporters have criticized so loudly about you, Senator Obama, is also largely true.

Since we know there won't be any actual substance in tonight's State of the Union address, we need something to keep it interesting. Accordingly, I present to you the 2008 State of the Union Drinking Game!

The general rules of the game are simple: every time Chimpy utters certain phrases (or variations thereof), you down a certain number of drinks. If you're a lightweight, make it a sip; if you're alcoholic, stick to juice or water; if you can drink most of your friends under the table, that's not really anything to be proud of -- remember, this is in good fun and not at all serious, but you don't want to humiliate yourself in front of your friends by getting drunk and doing something stupid, like applauding Chimpy.

Without further ado, some rules:

And in doing so, he conveniently ignores Arkansas history.

Many of you will probably recall this story from just a couple of days ago:

Republican Mike Huckabee said the government should stay out of disputes over the Confederate flag in South Carolina.

"You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag," Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, told supporters Thursday in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

"In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole, that's what we'd do," Huckabee said.

Or as Eternal Hope put it the other day, "Go shove it up your ass."

Tomorrow is the first step in retaking the White House. It is often said that primaries are for purity, while the general election is for consensus. That being the case, I'm opting for purity: your candidate isn't good enough.

Yet.

...not a creature was stirring, not even a dog.

Our traffic decreased, though our rants weren't suspended,
Lamenting the knowledge that candidate diaries are never ended.

Ah, the joys of the season! When various groups celebrate Chanukah, Solstice, Eid ul-Adha, Kwanzaa, Christmas, or other holidays, you'd think it would be a more festive, peaceful time.

You'd think that. But you would be wrong. Perhaps I should start at the beginning.

My fiancee and I are moving soon from our comfortable home here in Madison, Wisconsin, so we decided to have some close friends over tomorrow, before we really start packing everything to ship to Boston. Of course, we needed a few things for the gathering, so I was sent on a little shopping trip. I suppose it was inevitable, then, that I would come across one of the Salvation Army pots with accompanying bell ringer, asking for a donation.

Dear Editor,

I am a citizen of the United States. Some of my fellow citizens say there is no Constitution. My congressional representative, a good liberal sort, tells me, "If you see it on Daily Kos, it's so." Please tell me the truth, is there a Constitution? - Virginia O'Hanlon

kath25 asked me to write about voter registration for this week's diary; I selected this week because Election Day is this coming Tuesday. Granted, we're not even in a midterm election year for federal offices, but some states, notably Kentucky and Mississippi, have gubernatorial elections (go Steve Beshear and John Eaves, Jr.!), and some major US cities also have mayoral elections, notably San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Houston. In any case, if you want to vote, you have to register first. Follow me as I cover why it's so important for us under-35 types to vote, and then a little bit about the confusing variation in registration standards.

(Yes, I'm filling in at PD's request tonight. Just go with it...)

Let us pray* for the welfare and wisdom of the leaders of the United States of America, for too many of them either know not or care not what they do.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

And so the founding of our country was declared, with a statement of the universality of basic human rights. Yet even then, we did not practice what we preached. We denied women basic rights, including the franchise, for most of our national history, and in many ways we continue to do so today; for instance, women's wages are still just 76.5% that of men in the US (warning: big PDF file). And we denied even the basic personhood of black folks, counting them as 3/5 of a person for the purposes of congressional representation in Article I Section 2 of the Constitution until the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.

And we continue to deny basic rights to our LGBT brothers and sisters.

A friend of mine attended a conference last week at Harvard, the purpose of which was to revisit the conclusions of what is known among social scientists and policymakers as The Moynihan Report, written by prominent sociologist, Democrat, and Senator (D-NY) Daniel Patrick Moynihan; its official title is "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action."

The Moynihan Report was written in 1965, when Moynihan was an assistant Secretary of Labor in the Johnson administration. Moynihan's two most prominent findings were that the high unemployment rate for black men was a primary cause of homelessness and family instability in the black community, and that government intervention was necessary to alleviate this problem before the already rising rate of single motherhood in the black community led to the complete dissolution of the traditional family within the black community.

Some of my friends here have asked me to write a little something about Yom Kippur; this is my humble attempt to acquiesce.

From Friday night from just before sundown until just after sundown on Saturday night, Jews around the world will be observing Yom Kippur, the "Day of Atonement," when we ask God to pardon us for any sins we may have committed against Him/Her/It over the previous year; by tradition, God judges our fate for the coming year on this day.